


Long Gone Lover’s Noose

by La_Pacifidora



Category: Community (TV)
Genre: Character Study, Female Friendship, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-26
Updated: 2014-02-26
Packaged: 2018-01-13 20:03:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,430
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1239109
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/La_Pacifidora/pseuds/La_Pacifidora
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She hadn’t told Shirley the entire truth: She hadn’t had many female friends when she was growing up. (And the girls who tagged along when she got high with her guy friends didn’t count.) It wasn’t just because she’d shot up almost five inches in one summer or had been the first to actually need a bra – not just wear one because a parent bought her one. No, it was because when you went to a small school, all the dating had a slightly incestuous bent: Boyfriends and girlfriends switched every so often like a game of musical chairs. Inevitably, you’d end up spending a month or so sitting at lunch with a boy who used to like your best friend better.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Long Gone Lover’s Noose

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on [my personal fic journal at LJ in November 2011](http://lap-fic.livejournal.com/4142.html).
> 
> Spoilers: Assumes knowledge of the entire series through “Advanced Gay.”
> 
> Disclaimers: Not mine. Although I think Dan Harmon knows this friend of mine and based Troy on her…
> 
> Author’s note: I don’t even know where this came from, other than I like Britta and I miss when she had interesting storylines. Don’t get me wrong: I love that she’s decided on psychology, but I feel like it’s an excuse for the writers to have her prompt Jeff about his issues. The Britta I love is a fully defined character, not just a cog in the machine of another character’s development. Also, the whole edible/Oedipal mispronunciation thing? Not buying it. The bagel thing I get, having experienced it, but Britta is simply not that stupid.

They hadn’t slept together in months. 

Literally. Not once in nearly six months. 

Britta didn’t know if she was impressed or insulted, and why it was even keeping her awake.

After all, wasn’t she the reason Jeff had started the study group? Wasn’t his interest in getting in her pants the whole reason she knew these people?

The blonde sighed and turned onto her side, punching down her pillow and burrowed into it. 

On the other hand, his determination to make her a notch on his bedpost hadn’t kept him from making out with Annie. 

It hadn’t kept him from dating that statistics-trolling bitch.

It hadn’t kept him from chasing after Pierce’s step-daughter like a horny dog.

It hadn’t – Britta frowned and rubbed at her eyes. 

It’s possible it was the hour (She really was _not_ her best before her first cup of coffee.) or it’s possible it was the dreams she’d had (This was really the absolute _last_ time she took part in one of Troy and Abed’s epic ‘Inspector Spacetime’ live streams. Seriously.), but she was having trouble keeping track of all the other women Jeff had pursued while he’d been , quote-unquote, trying to win her over.

The gist of it was, wasn’t she whole reason the study group existed? Where did they get off making fun of her and telling her she couldn’t be, wouldn’t be a good therapist?

OK, so maybe having elaborate murder fantasies about her friends wasn’t entirely _normal_. But normal was highly over-rated. 

She hoped. (Besides, what was normal? _Abed_?)

The point was, weren’t they all friends because, watered way down, she was the well to which Jeff’s divining rod had led him?

Britta snorted.

“That’s one he never needs to hear.” She closed her eyes and flipped onto her stomach, sighing into her pillow. “And now I’m talking to myself. _Awesome_. You’re a picture of mental health, Perry.” She slid her hands under the pillow and pressed it into her face, letting out an aggravated scream.

But speaking of mental health: What the hell was up with Annie? What happened to the overachieving, note-taking nerd she’d met two years ago?

Britta turned her head and stared out through the sliver of window she could see between the hem of her curtains and the window sill. 

Britta knew what happened to Annie. One word: Jeff. Another word: Winger. She drew her lower lip between her teeth and blew a breath out through her nose. A third word: Kissing.

She’d be lying if she said he wasn’t a decent kisser. (Not the best. But then what could you expect from a Sleaze-Bot? Kissing Jeff was nothing compared to kissing – other people. Other people who were occasionally stupid but fundamentally nicer and better.) It was easy to understand how Annie could be swayed.

And it’s not like trying to force something to happen with Jeff had made either of them happy. Not because she felt like she was lying to her friends – she hadn’t realized how much Annie liked Jeff, or, at least, how much Annie thought she liked Jeff – but because, satisfying as it (sometimes) was, a secret sex-only arrangement was emotional asthma. 

She’d choke on her words when she was lying in bed next to him. She’d find herself second-guessing her actions, worried she’d somehow reveal their affair. She’d be harsher on him than his behavior warranted.

They’d still been found out. She’d seen Troy’s face every time she closed her eyes for months. She’d seen the way Shirley looked at her like she was a stranger wearing a friend’s skin. She’d seen Pierce’s smugness hiding under surprise.

She saw the way Annie ignored her still. Little things, mostly, like not announcing she was going to the bathroom, or not offering to grab her a refill at lunch. Bigger things, too, like not having much of any opinion when she said she was going to become a psychologist.

Or, you know, like making her a vampire Capri Sun.

It wasn’t the role Annie had put her in that bugged her. That was to be expected: She and Jeff kept their arrangement secret, like it was something dirty and wrong, when, _really_ , it was only stupid and tawdry.

It was that Annie made her passive, that she wasn’t worth paying attention to, that she wasn’t worth trying to save.

That’s the part that stung.

Not because she needed saving – she was a modern woman, after all, and fully capable of pulling her own ass out of the fire – but it was that Annie didn’t put herself on the same level with Britta anymore.

Once, they’d schemed together to break into the Dean’s office. Now, she wasn’t even worthy of being Annie’s imaginary ally.

Britta turned onto her other side and pulled her blanket up to her chin.

She got it, she did. She’d spent months talking about how horrible Jeff was, how gross he was, how he wasn’t relationship material. She’d made it clear that no intelligent woman would pick him, and then she’d had to admit she’d done exactly that.

Apparently, it wasn’t just that she could try to tell Annie to do as she said and not as she did. She also couldn’t cancel her reservation to sleep in the bed she’d made.

If her friends treated her like she’d let them down, she couldn’t be angry with them when she was the one who defined what that disappointment would be.

Britta flopped onto her back and pulled both her arms from under the sheets to clasp her hands on her stomach and twiddle her thumbs.

She hadn’t told Shirley the entire truth: She hadn’t had many female friends when she was growing up. (And the girls who tagged along when she got high with her guy friends didn’t count.)

It wasn’t just because she’d shot up almost five inches in one summer or had been the first to actually need a bra – not just wear one because a parent bought her one.

No, it was because when you went to a small school, all the dating had a slightly incestuous bent: Boyfriends and girlfriends switched every so often like a game of musical chairs. Inevitably, you’d end up spending a month or so sitting at lunch with a boy who used to like your best friend better. 

But Britta missed whatever memo went out in fifth grade, where suddenly all the girls knew how to flirt and all the boys knew how to make it clear which girl’s flirting they were paying attention to. She missed whatever class they took that explained how to navigate the change in partners without stepping on any metaphorical toes.

Her rough edges were never sanded down, and she spent the next 18 years rubbing people the wrong way.

That’s why she toked up and got ‘faced; why she dropped acid (once) and took mushrooms (twice, but only once on purpose); why she sniffed glue and tried doing whip-its: It was built in friends who didn’t care if she didn’t say the right thing.

She put up with Jeff trying to get in her pants that first semester – first year, really – because she hoped it was a chance to do the friend thing and dating thing the right way. But she’d screwed it up, again, and she didn’t have much to show for it, either. She didn’t even have the guy.

Because he’d apparently started to grow something she thought might be a conscious. Because he was paying more attention to Annie, even when Annie wasn’t looking.

Because she saw the way Troy would study her every once in a while, like he was trying to figure out if she was hiding something else, something that would surprise and hurt him.

Because she might have been the reason Jeff started the study group, but she wasn’t the reason they were all friends who were still getting together and doing stupid shit two years later.

Because they hadn’t slept together in nearly six months, and while she didn’t miss him, specifically, she missed having someone there to tell her to stop fidgeting and go to sleep.

But none of that was going to matter if she didn’t make an effort this time, and that started with forgetting about whether _she_ was impressed or insulted and focusing on what her friends needed.

Britta’s eyes widened and she sat straight up in her bed.

Like if her friends needed 50 cupcakes for a bake sale in – she shot a glance at the clock on her dresser – two hours.

 _Shit_.


End file.
